cuchifritos
new york, ny
F.O.B.
yumi janairo roth
Essex Street Market
photograph by Nadine Wasserman
The Essex Street Market and its Origins
1
Suzanne Wasserman, Director, Gotham Center for NYC History
In 1930, at the start of the Great Depression, 47,000 New
Yorkers depended on earnings made from pushcarts; purchases generated $40 to $50 million each year. More than 50
percent of all the pushcarts in the city were to be found on
the Lower East Side. The peddler and his five-cent apples
became the ubiquitous folkloric symbol of the economic
hardships of the Depression years. For a time, peddling kept
unemployed New Yorkers off charity and, later, off relief, both
of which many saw as the ultimate humiliation.
2
City merchants did not empathize with the plight of the unemployed; instead, they viewed the increase in peddling as
a nuisance. At least a decade earlier, merchants had initiated
a campaign to wipe peddling out completely. Their explicit
goal was the “establishment of central public market buildings and the abolition of all curb pushcarts.”
3
In the pushcart districts, merchants always considered the
carts unfair competition. They assumed, mistakenly as it
turned out, that the pushcarts lowered property values and
competed unfairly with “legitimate stores.” Peddlers were
also a psychological threat. Little more than a front door and
a bit of savings separated the merchants from the pushcarts
and their practices. Many merchants engaged in the same
self-exploitation as the peddlers. They employed their entire
families, often lived in the dark backrooms of their store, and
worked from 5 A.M. until 11 P.M. The merchants were often
less than a step ahead of the peddlers on the rung of “success.”
4
Upon his election to the mayoralty in 1934, Fiorello LaGuardia
took up with a vengeance the issue of the public markets.
The federal government had poured huge amounts of money
directly into New York City with the advent of the New Deal.
It aimed to create jobs by promoting municipal improvements. The City Council asked the Board of Estimates to use
the city’s WPA funds to create indoor markets. The first indoor market opened on Park Avenue between 111th and 116th
streets in 1936. Other indoor markets followed, including the
markets on Essex Street, on First Avenue and Tenth Street,
and on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. These new indoor markets housed only a fraction of the peddlers and also charged
more. For example, the new Essex Street Market, opened
January 10, 1940, housed 570 stalls and charged the peddlers
four dollars per week, four times the amount they had previously paid on the streets.
Peddlers, still acutely feeling the pangs of the economic Depression, reacted pessimistically to news of the new municipal markets. In 1936, an article in the New York Post entitled,
They Might Starve Faster Indoors: Pushcart Dealers Too Depressed to Care, proclaimed that, “Indoors, a pushcart
woman exclaimed, the peddlers will ‘just starve faster,
5
that’s all… Nobody buys, nobody’s got the money, everybody’s on relief.’ ‘Inside it will be worse,’ claimed another, ‘but
outside it’s so bad you can’t make a living. Some days I don’t
make 75 cents. Can you live on that?’”
6
With the creation of the indoor markets, LaGuardia had been
able to accomplish what the merchants could not. With the
help of the New Deal’s unprecedented aid to cities, through
the WPA, LaGuardia achieved his goal in about five years.
Peddlers were now “forbidden” to sell merchandise on the
streets, and those who could not afford an indoor stand were
simply out of luck.
7
One observer at the opening of an indoor market noted that,
“the peddlers were attired in neat white coat. Each stood by
his indoor stand, his wares in orderly array. LaGuardia
launched into his address, and, suddenly, in the middle of it,
stooped and picked up an apple from one of the stands.
‘There will be no more of this,’ he said as he pretended to
spit on the apple. . . . Pointing to his listeners in their crisp
white coats, he concluded, ‘I found you pushcart peddlers…I
have made you MERCHANTS!’”
8
LaGuardia praised peddlers like Isadore Suranowitz who had
been a peddler on the same corner since 1913. “Tomorrow,”
Suranowitz predicted, referring to the opening of the First
Avenue market, “You’ll see me in a clean shirt. No more like
a peddler, I’ll be a merchant.” Unfortunately, peddlers like fifty
three year-old Giuseppe Sallemi would never make the move
from peddler to merchant. He made one dollar a day selling
lemons and could not possibly afford a stall indoors. Instead,
he joined the ranks of the unemployed.
9
The indoor markets opened with rules and reflected LaGuardia’s determination to “professionalize” the peddlers.
The rules now explicitly spelled out acceptable and unacceptable codes of behavior. Rule 21, for example, stated that,
“permittees or their authorized helpers must remain behind
their counters when transacting business and keep aisles free
for the use of patrons”; rule 22 declared that the peddlers,
“must, at all times, be courteous”; and rule 23 stated there
was to be, “no shouting or hawking by vendors nor abusive
and lewd language.” An amendment further hardened the administration’s position. Now, all vendors had to be citizens, which
cut at the very heart of the peddling community.
Ironically by 1940, the business community, which had fought
for ten years to remove the embarrassing pushcarts, now
complained that their removal had irreparably damaged their
trade. Much to their shock, the merchants soon saw that once
the pushcarts disappeared, they immediately experienced a
drastic decline in trade. By late 1941 the merchants on Orchard Street had found that “the removal of the pushcarts…
has reduced gross sales…approximately 60 percent. . . .
Streets such as Orchard Street enjoyed an international reputation as ‘The Street of Great Bargains’. . . . The removal of
the pushcarts altered conditions considerably.”
Fifteen thousand peddlers lined the streets of the city when
LaGuardia came to power. By 1945, a little more than ten
years later, only twelve hundred still stood. While the campaign taken up by Lower East Side merchants in the 1920s
had been stymied, the LaGuardia administration virtually
completed it by 1941.
10
11
LaGuardia never succeeded in completely eliminating peddling. Today peddling offers growing numbers of new immigrants a way to earn a living. Battles over issues of peddling
abound in many predominantly immigrant neighborhoods. In
recent years, debates have swirled around vendors clogging
the streets of Harlem, Washington Heights, and the Lower
East Side. Questions persist concerning the fate of poor and
primarily immigrant people dependent on the marginal economy of peddling, as well as on the place of peddling in the
urban environment. Some view the dilemma angrily, others
nostalgically, and still others argue that peddling contributes
to the vibrancy of city life. The battles over vending remain
remarkably familiar and filled with historical ironies.
One bright note in recent years is the success of Essex Street
Market. Long failing and a blight on the neighborhood, the
indoor market is “thriving today as it never did, making available both the world of the bodega and the universe of the
gourmand.” New York City’s Economic Development Corporation poured $1.5 million into its renovation. In a city increasing segregated into the very rich and the very poor, the
Essex Street Market today ironically stands as an example of
a successful commercial space that caters to local residents
and visitors alike.
12
1-Based in part on my essay, Hawkers and Gawkers: Peddling and Markets in New York City, Gastropolis: Food and New York City, Annie
Hauck Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch (eds), Columbia University Press,
2008.
2-East Side Chamber News, March 1930, p 7 – 8.
3-East Side Chamber News, June, 1929.
4-Albert Henry Aronson, The Ramifications of Our Marketing Problem,
ESCN, November 1929, 17; and also see Rebecca Rankin, New York Advancing—World’s Fair Edition (New York: Municipal Reference Library,
1939), 105; Mark Soliterman, The Small Retailer on the East Side, ESCN,
December 1929, 17.
5-Harry B. Brainard, City Plans Four Public Market Buildings on Essex
Street, ESCN, September 1936, cover.
6-Ruth McKenny, They Might Starve Faster Indoors: Pushcart Peddlers
Too Depressed to Care, New York Post, July 11, 1936, sec. 2, 3:3–6.
7-ESCN, December 1937, 8; April 1937, 7; and July 1937, cover.
8-Newbold Morris,Let the Chips Fall: My Battle Against Corruption
(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955), 119-20; and Robert Caro,
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York:
Vintage, 1975), 447.
9-Editorial, New York Herald Tribune, December 1, 1938, 3-5.
10-Editorial, Chamber Director Wins Stoop-Stand License Fight Against
License Commissioner, ESCN, October 1941, 4.
11-Rebecca Rankin, ed., New York Advancing—Victory Edition (New York:
Municipal Reference Library, 1945), 208; New York Advancing—1939 Edition (New York: Municipal Reference Library, 1939), 105.
12-Ginia Bellafante, A Market Grows on the Lower East Side, New York
Times, December 6, 2006, F1
Cargo Cult, found shipping pallets inlaid with mother-of-pearl, 2009
photograph by Derek Eller
A conversation between Yumi Janairo Roth and
Nadine Wasserman, Independent Curator and Critic
The title F.O.B.: Yumi Janairo Roth contains a double meaning.
“F.O.B.” not only stands for “freight on board” but it is also a
term used to mean “fresh off the boat” in reference to immigrants who have arrived from a foreign nation and have not
yet “assimilated.” The Lower East Side, a historically immigrant
community, is the perfect setting for the body of work Roth
created during her recent residency with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. During her residency Roth gathered discarded shipping pallets from her Lower Manhattan environs
and intricately inlaid each one by hand with mother-of-pearl
using patterns gleaned from traditional Southeast Asian furniture and decorative objects. In this way, Roth re-considers a
ubiquitous yet most often disregarded object. Given a second
life, the pallets become surrogates for the immigrant experience. They are at once local and global.
In much of her work, Roth uses everyday objects as symbols
for the ways in which our external environment is controlled
and transitory. She calls attention to objects that might otherwise be overlooked but that influence our lives without our
taking much notice. For a solo exhibition in Houston she altered various barricades and traffic cones and placed them
throughout the city. By adding disco mirrors to wooden traffic
barriers, decorative orange and white striped satin slipcovers
to concrete Jersey barriers, and piñata decorations to traffic
cones, Roth drew attention to objects that were generically
unassuming yet authoritarian. Her alterations re-contextualize
these objects and subvert their control. By glamming up these
otherwise mundane objects, Roth asks questions about comfort, safety, and displacement.
Roth’s shipping pallets function in a similar way. They are reimagined as decorative objects. In an earlier iteration, Roth
constructed shipping pallets by hand that were highly-polished, inlaid, and finely carved. Her current series are authentic shipping pallets that she has inlaid by hand with
mother-of-pearl, but left rough, broken, and stained. They are
transformed by ornamentation but they retain their street
cred as the workhorses of global shipping and commerce. In
a sense they are symbolic of immigrants and guest workers —
uprooted, often invisible, yet indispensable to the world market.
Most often generic and nondescript, the pallets become representative of the way various ethnicities have inhabited the
neighborhood, each bringing to it their own food and culture,
often shipped from abroad. The Essex Street Market is a microcosm of the many cultures that inhabit the area. Historically it is the descendent of the once ubiquitous pushcarts
that were forced indoors by Mayor LaGuardia. In the context
of the Market, an installation of Roth’s pallets along with photographs of the pallets on city streets illuminates the ubiquity
and dignity of these once forlorn and subjugated objects.
Cargo Cult, found shipping pallet inlaid with mother-of-pearl, 2009
photograph by Yumi Janairo Roth
NW: Much of your work is influenced by place. Can you explain your working process and how you develop your
ideas?
YJR: When I travel to a new location, I usually spend quite a
bit of time wandering around, making photographs, and taking notes of situations, objects, etc., that I find unusual or unfamiliar. In fact, I'm often at my most productive when I'm least
comfortable in the place where I'm (temporarily) living. The
unfamiliarity of everything makes me acutely aware of my surroundings, which in turn gives me ideas about how I might
respond to a particular place. Although I might have a rough
idea of what I could work on, I need to spend time in a place
to fully understand what sort of project I might undertake.
NW: You are trained in metals but your work is mostly conceptual and sculptural. Can you explain what influences
your choices in terms of materials and subject matter?
YJR: In addition to metalsmithing, I also have a background
in anthropology and archaeology. As a result I'm extremely
interested in the social history and meaning of objects and
materials. The academic term for "things" in anthropology is
"material culture" and this term best describes how I think
about objects and their relationship to social/cultural situations. Essentially "material culture" describes the whole constellation of cultural, social, and economic relationships that
objects embody. I think that I'm most drawn to things that are
overlooked or considered banal. In past projects, I've worked
with police barriers, traffic cones, didactic design, and maps,
all things that we encounter and use on a daily basis, but
rarely consider beyond their most basic function.
NW: How did you start this particular body of work?
YJR: This most recent iteration of found shipping pallets inlaid with mother-of-pearl, documentation of the pallets, and
diazo print drawings is part of a larger project I started in
2005. At that time, I worked in the Philippines as an artist-inresidence at the Vargas Museum located in Metro Manila. I
was interested in looking at "traditional" methods of embellishment, woodcarving and inlay, which were used on a range
of kitschy to "fine" objects from trinkety souvenir items
to high-end, heirloom-quality furniture and architecture. I
built shipping pallets from mahogany and inlaid them with
mother-of pearl and also worked with woodcarvers and carpenters to realize a series of custom shipping pallets. In 2007
I returned to the Philippines this time to work at the Ayala
Museum. In the US, I built the frames for nearly one dozen
furniture dollies, packed them in my luggage and, once in the
Philippines, had them caned in rattan. Once I reassembled
the dollies, I distributed them to several businesses in Manila
(a shipping company, furniture moving company, and museum) to use as they might use a typical furniture dolly. I was
interested in understanding how those using the dollies
might reconcile two conflicting design languages, one highly
functional and another highly decorative which inhabited the
same object. In the project at Cuchifritos,
I was interested in creating a greater schism between the re-
Blueprint Drawing no. 1 (above), Blueprint Drawing no. 3 (left), diazo print, 2009
photographs by Cathy Carver
I was interested in creating a greater schism between the refined and culturally-specific embellishment of mother-of-pearl
and the roughness of used shipping pallets by using shipping
pallets that I scavenged from areas around Lower Manhattan.
NW: The process of inlaying is incredibly labor intensive.
How did you learn it and how are these pieces different than
the one you did that was completely handmade?
YJR: I taught myself how to do traditional mother-of-pearl
inlay. In many ways, my earlier training in metalsmithing
helped me to understand how to capture and reproduce the
small details found in various decorative objects. Although I
hadn’t ever inlaid metal or wood before, it was analogous to
many techniques I already understood. In general, this is how
I approach all of my projects. I determine the nature of the
thing I want to make and then teach myself the requisite
skills. In this project, I think that by using existing shipping
pallets, I was able to exploit their abject quality. These were
pallets that were one step from the dumpster, repaired too
many times to continue to be useful.
NW: Cuchifritos is the perfect setting for these particular
pieces. We both discovered it separately, but around the
same time. I was actually doing a food tour of the area. How
did you find it?
YJR: For several months between 2008-09, I worked in
Lower Manhattan as an artist-in-residence. Before my time
with LMCC, I hadn't spent any significant time in that area.
However, as I was living and working in the area, I spent a lot
of time in Tribeca, the Lower East Side and Chinatown. It was
during that residency that I started visiting the Essex Street
Market and became intrigued by the idea of a "white cube"
gallery located in an indoor food market. The usually silent
space of the gallery was continuously disrupted by the noise
of the market and the normally segregated activities of food
shopping, eating, and art viewing overlapped in a slightly
messy way.
NW: What are you working on right now?
YJR: After my stint with LMCC, I lived in Barcelona for several
months in the spring. I was interested in the African immigrants who sold faux designer bags that they displayed on
blankets (mantas in Spanish) spread out on the sidewalk
throughout the city. In Spain it’s called top manta. I decided
to start redesigning the blankets so that they better reflected
the aspirational quality of fake Prada, Louis Vuitton and Hermés bags. Subsequently I became interested in exploring
democratic methods for producing and distributing luxury designer goods and logos. Recently, I started carving potato
stamps with the purpose of making my own Hermés, Louis
Vuitton and Prada logos, however poorly. Additionally, although I managed to give myself a repetitive-stress injury
after months of inlaying pallets, I’m also trying to devise a way
to build a full-scale shipping container that is both carved and
inlaid with mother-of-pearl.